Episode 8: What Makes Our Planner Different

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In this episode, we give you a tour of the Evergreen Planner System.

There are so many planners out there—so did we decide to create another one? What makes our planner different?

We created this system because we couldn’t find a planner that felt intuitive—that brought all the different areas of our lives together. We didn’t want a planner for mom life, and another for our business, and a notebook for our hobbies, and something else for homeschooling. We wanted one tool.

So we created a planner that is minimalistic, intuitive, and extremely versatile. Instead of asking you to change the way you organize your thoughts, this planner was made to change and flex with your evolving needs.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

When Shelby tucked her homemade worksheets under her arm on her way to her sister’s house on spring morning, she never would’ve believed that their lives were about to change forever. What she imagined would be a quick, casual chat about these personal-development exercises she’d created for herself actually turned into a flurry of innovation.

McCauley had been feeling pretty overwhelmed with her own attempts at getting organized. Her ideas and tasks were scattered between a cheap planner, two different calendars, and a few random notebooks.

What if the countless hours Shelby had been pouring into time-management research were combined with McCauley’s knack for designing aesthetic products that actually worked the way they were advertised?

The two entrepreneurial sisters went to work at the kitchen table—babies swaddled and strapped on—cutting and pasting together a dream planner. Instead of tweaking the hundreds of existing planners, they threw all convention out the window and started over.

The Evergreen Planner was developed to answer to these industry-disrupting questions:

• What if you could see your week’s agenda at the same time as you plan your day?
• What if you never felt lost in your own planner?
• What if your planner could lead you through a simple series of prompts that quickly helped you organize your thoughts—but without overwhelming or distracting you?
• What if your planner only contained the things you actually need to get organized and make progress—and nothing that you don’t?
• What if your planner could be so classy that it actually elevated your aesthetic?
• What if your planner could seem so intuitive, personal, and dynamic that it felt like a natural extension of your arm—a fully-functioning hub for your brain?

The Evergreen Planner System

Shelby and McCauley stopped at nothing to design a system that would effectively answer these questions. Even when it was suggested to them that their booklet designs would be too expensive to even manufacture, they pressed on, knowing that our groundbreaking dutch door layout would be key to planning with real life context.

Before it was even brought to market, this planner underwent a lot of rigorous field-testing. Every bit of feedback our beta testers gave us went into the refinement of this planner through six major prototypes.

The result is our wildly effective three-part system:

The Annual is the doorway to the system. This 12-month calendar booklet provides a birds-eye view of your year with the powerful addition of plenty of flex space to map goals and plan your year. Each month spread is followed by three blank bullet grid pages. Learn more here.

The Classic is the muscle of the system. It’s an undated 5-week planner booklet with weekly and daily spreads. This is the only planner booklet you’ll find on the market with a dutch door layout that allows you to see your day and your week’s agenda simultaneously. Each week spread has a vertical calendar to write dates, habit trackers, and plenty of customizable flex space to write lists, map week goals or brain-dump ideas. Each day spread has a  time blocking section, correlating to-do list, micro-journaling prompts, and plenty of flex bullet space. These booklets come subscription box style every quarter—or in a year bundle—so you never run out of planner. Learn more here.

The Cover is the glue that binds the whole system together into one unit. Handcrafted locally in genuine leather and designed in a traveler’s journal style, it protects your planner booklets with class. It has six pockets in varying sizes to carry loose papers and lists, extra spine elastics for additional booklets, and two elastic loops to hold pens or washi tape. It’s enduring, and incredibly stunning. It is a piece you will use and treasure for years. Learn more here.

This planner has become an integral part of our intentional lifestyles. It helps us bring our goals into context with the realities of our lives, and translate our long-term intentions into daily choices.

We dive more into this in today's episode, and share the impact that this innovative system has had on each of our lives. We also invite you to imagine how it might change the game for you.

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Web: evergreenplanner.com

Instagram: @EvergreenPlanner

Learn the Evergreen Planning Method: evergreenplanner.com/renew